Major media, imagining themselves sober, think there are many universes, not just double vision

Sometimes it seems hard to believe, but the idea that there are zillions of universes out there is not, for some people, merely the Drunkard's Excuse (= in another universe, I was sober, did not meet that woman, she is not infanticipating ....) Mmmm, yeah.

Anyway, here is CalTech's Sean Carroll's latest, in a puffball interview with the LA Times (June 28, 2008):

LA Times: The universe is more than what we see?

Carroll: The reason why you are not surprised when you open a deck of cards and it's in perfect order is not because it's just easy and natural to find it in perfect order, it's because the deck of cards is not a closed system. It came from a bigger system in which there is a card factory somewhere that arranged it. So I think there is a previous universe somewhere that made us and we came out.

We're part of a bigger structure.

LA Times: Are you saying that our universe came from some other universe?

Carroll: Right. It came from a bigger space-time that we don't observe. Our universe came from a tiny little bit of a larger high-entropy space.

I'm not saying this is true; I'm saying this is an idea worth thinking about.

LA Times: You're saying that in some universes there could be a person like you drinking coffee, but out of a blue cup rather than a red one.

Carroll: If our local, observable universe is embedded in a larger structure, a multiverse, then there's other places in this larger structure that have denizens in them that call their local environs the universe. And conditions in those other places could be very different. Or they could be pretty similar to what we have here.

Or they could just not exist.

Why do so few journalists have the guts to just ask why, apart from the need to "bet against" God (which Carroll admits is an issue at the end of the article), physicists are remotely considering this stuff?

Friend Casey Luskin (yes, yes, an evil Disco) notes that NewsWeek seems to be buying this brand uncritically too.

Too bad. There would be way more fun sending it all up than listening to these physics nerds as if they were prophets.

PS: If you see the image above you are, like, lost in a sea of cosmos. (Hint: That's the name of the flower.)

Coffee break: Scientist discovers two alternative universes

I am completely envious and I, like, totally admit it. This guy Steve Burri (one of the fellows in this picture) is way better than me when it comes to sending up goofy "zillions of universes" cosmology:

The scientists and researchers employed in my secret basement laboratory are quite an ecclectic bunch. We have staff that wash their hands and brush their teeth after every thought as well as those whose superstitions will not allow them to change their underwear until the completion of their research project. We have committed Christians as well as atheists who should be committed. We have cool, but mostly we have nerd. One biochemist's 5 year old was visiting and after talking to several researchers said to her dad, "Daddy, these guys make even Todd and Lance seem cool." Her dad just shook his head and said, "Sweetie, you have never met Todd or Lance, have you?" That little girl has the cutest giggle.

Perhaps the most unusual character in our lab is Alfred the Atheist, one of our physicists. He's a Landscaper of the String Theory clan. Alfred is always spewing equations about which no one else has a clue. Nobody is ever sure if he really knows what he is talking about. Our only evidence on these matters occurs when he does calculations on his super computer. Often after a result is obtained, his computer smacks itself on its monitor with its own mouse and exclaims, "Boo-yah! My hard drive just had an orgasm!" Then it has a smoke.

Alfred has long been determined to calculate and describe the nature of other universes in the Landscape. (Some say that he hasn't changed underwear in 3 years; others claim he goes 'commando.') He declares that he wants to prove beyond all question that God doesn't exist. His computer now has a 2 pack-a-day habit.

And it gets better when "Alfred", sort of, discovers something ...

I can only get over this fit of envy by writing another book.

Hey, I have been a book editor most of my adult life. I know books. I know them well.

The excellent Burris, pictured above, maybe don't.

Yes, book writing is indeed a dying art, and I'll die with it but ... not yet.

I will write one more book. Meanwhile, enjoy Steve Burri's spoof, and don't blame me if you are one Offended bunny ... I, as it happens, do NOT care ...

Teacher: Big ideas without science methods are blank cheque

Recently, I responded to Brian Greene's suggestion that science teachers should teach the big ideas in science, to get students interested. My point was that without a grasp of the underlying principles and fact base, the big ideas in science will not be distinguishable from big ideas in science fiction. A physics teacher kindly writes to comment:

A few thoughts here:

1. The small details in Science are what actually makes up the big picture. Scientific knowledge is like a jigsaw puzzle made up of many small interlocking pieces. One cannot intelligently embrace a large idea, e.g., the Big Bang, without first comprehending the many little ideas that built up to it. Otherwise one is signing a blank cheque.

2. Science is much more an epistemology than a body of knowledge. The goal of science teaching is to get students to think this way: recognise a problem, formulate hypotheses which can be tested experimentally, design and carry out experiments which test one variable at a time, repeat experiments for clarity of results, and draw conclusions from those results to modify or validate the hypotheses. That's the scientific method, limited in scope but powerful in application.

3. Unless one has undergone the discipline of thinking through the steps of the method, one has no idea how much certainty one can place in the various pieces of the puzzle. I have a great deal of confidence in some aspects of modern cosmology because I know the experimental basis for them; an example of this would be the tri-hydrogen reaction. On the other hand, some aspects are almost pure speculation (gravitons, for example) and I can hold onto them very lightly. The speculation is necessary, not only because the human mind wants to see the whole picture even when a puzzle piece is missing, but also because the missing pieces provide a locus for new experimentation.

Signing a blank cheque? That reminds me of the spectacular claim in the May 2003 SciAm article by Max Tegmark that

Cosmologists infer the presence of Level II parallel universes by scrutinizing the properties of our universe. These properties, including the strength of the forces of nature and the number of observable space and time dimensions, were established by random processes during the birth of our universe. Yet they have exactly the values that sustain life. That suggests the existence of other universes with other values.

Now, talk about a blank cheque! Our universe looks fine-tuned so there must be a zillion flops out there.

But then maybe the entire universe is just a wave function . . .

Stephen Hawking has tried his hand at designing a design-free universe, as well. In A Brief History of Time, he suggests:

So long as the universe had a beginning, we would suppose it had a creator (the cosmological argument). But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

How can the universe both be finite and have no boundary? To make this work, Hawking relies on imaginary time, rather than real time. Chemists sometimes use the concept of time measured in imaginary numbers, such as the square root of minus 2, in order to solve equations. He pictures the universe in imaginary time as being like a wave, with no one point that is the beginning. The problem here is the reality check. When chemists use imaginary time to solve equations, they always have to convert back to real values. Once we get back to real time, the universe does have a beginning.

Hawking acknowledges this, saying that “when one goes back to the real time in which we live, however, there will still appear to be singularities.” In other words, a beginning. He suggests:

In real time, the universe has a beginning and an end at singularities that form a boundary to space-time and at which the laws of science break down. But in imaginary time, there are no singularities or boundaries. So maybe what we call imaginary time is really more basic, and what we call real is just an idea that we invent to help us describe what we think the universe is like.

So … what we call real is “just an idea we invent”? That is a leap of faith, a very different leap of faith from the belief that there is a God whose existence guarantees that what we observe in science experiments, however strange, is real and is happening. Which leap makes more sense for science?

From By Design or by Chance?, page 37.

Other universes: Why the materialist needs an infinite number of them

Geoff Robinson of "Faith, Beer, and other things that interest Geoff blog" is not impressed with multiverse theories. He comments,

I've been thinking two things about multiverses. Irreducible complexity stands in the way of multiverses working with biology even if it explains the physics. Also, part of the transcendental argument for God (TAG) includes the problem of induction. In other words, laws of physics need a law-giver otherwise you have laws hanging in mid-air. Multiverses do not solve this.

I'm not sure about the irreducible complexity part, Geoff. I suppose if there were infinite numbers of universes, some would contain irreducible complexity, and our current set of laws would be one of infinite possibilities. There might be infinite universes just like ours that do not contain life and infinite numbers that do.

In other words, many universes can solve the fine-tuning problem (why is our universe apparently exquisitely fine-tuned for life to come into existence?) only if there is an arbitrarily large number of universes and all but a few of them have flopped.

Millions of fine-tuned universes with different laws from ours would imply a cosmic creator of universes who never fails. A few flopped universes would imply a less-perfect creator who produced a few flops before producing the blockbuster.

So to rule out God, the materialist needs infinite universes, most of which have flopped, and a few of which accidentally succeeded. A tall order, considering that we only know about one universe now.

Catholic Cardinal: Multiverse theory an "abdication of human intelligence"?

Just now, I am writing a review of Chance or Purpose? Creation, Evolution, and a Rational Faith, by Christoph, Cardinal Schoenborn (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007).

Schoenborn was the Cardinal who made waves back in July 2005 with an op-ed in The New York Times, in which he made clear that the Catholic Church will resist being transformed into a gaggle of dhimmis for Darwin.

What I hadn't noted at the time was that he referred directly to multiverse theory as another aspect of the "abdication of human intelligence":

Now at the beginning of the 21st century, faced with scientific claims like neo-Darwinism and the multiverse hypothesis in cosmology invented to avoid the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design found in modern science, the Catholic Church will again defend human reason by proclaiming that the immanent design evident in nature is real. Scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of "chance and necessity" are not scientific at all, but, as John Paul put it, an abdication of human intelligence.

"... invented to avoid the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design found in modern science ... " Strong words those. A far cry from telling thinking Catholics that good little angels say the rosary with Mother Angelica ...

PS: Apologies to anyone annoyed yesterday by my effort to make the hedders green, rersulting in visible formatting codes. It's not easy being green.